Kind Words Can Lead to Harsh Consequences

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Politeness has a place, but not in high-stakes situations,
according to researchers.

Whether a pilot is making an emergency flight or a doctor is
trying to help a patient make a surgical decision, the sort of
vague, evasive responses that help us avoid hurting someone's
feelings can have disastrous consequences, according to a team of
scientists, including Jean-François Bonnefon and Wim de Neys of
the National Center for Scientific Research and the University of
Toulouse in France, and Aidan Feeney of Queen's University in the
United Kingdom.

But, because it can require us to become evasive and vague,
politeness can have a downside: It can lead to uncertainty about
what the polite person
is actually saying. As a result, we have to spend more mental
resources trying to parse the actual meaning, the researchers
write in their review of past studies on politeness in the
October issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological
Science.

This can have negative consequences for safety and security in
high-stakes situations. The authors note a chapter in Malcolm
Gladwell's book "Outliers: The Story of Sucess" (Little, Brown
and Co., 2008) devoted to the idea that politeness crashes
planes, because crew members sacrifice clarity for politeness. In
one of his examples, a first officer attempts to tell the captain
about a
dangerous amount of ice on the aircraft's wings, "Look how
the ice is just hanging on his, ah, back there, see that?" the
officer reportedly said, followed by a second and third attempt
that are just as unclear and polite. By this time, the plane is
about to take off and will crash a short while later, the
researchers write.

Of course, politeness can wreak havoc within corporate settings,
when workers don't want to embarrass their bosses or co-workers.

There are solutions, including assertiveness training — though
it's not yet clear how well it works. It may also be possible to
identify signals associated with politeness, such as tone, and
train people to react to them as warning signs, according to
Bonnefon.